Dr. David Meredith:

I thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to address it today. I have been involved in this area for a long time. Much of my work focuses on trying to understand changes that are taking place in rural areas. The document I have prepared for the committee draws attention to the social dimensions of those changes. General processes of change can have an impact on individual places. I refer to the closure of a business or the creation of a new business, for example. Such changes are part of wider social processes and changes. In my document, I draw attention to the impact of the growth in third level education and the progression of large numbers of people to third level education. The document also refers to the impact of the feminisation of the workforce, which has been ongoing for decades, and to changes in the locational preferences of enterprises and the restructuring of the economy which is associated with that. Some sectors are growing relatively more quickly than others.

Larger proportions of younger people have been progressing onto third level education. There was a gender difference in the past when more women than men went onto third level education, but those numbers have started to come into line with each other since the onset of the recession. The implication for rural areas is that when young people go onto third level education, they leave such areas and move to cities or larger towns where third level institutes are located. After they have completed their courses, they tend to stay in those urban centres to start their careers. Jobs in the areas in which young people are educated and trained tend to be available in such places. This gives rise to the feminisation of the workforce. As I have said, larger proportions of women have traditionally gone onto third level education. A point in time is reached when people who have entered the labour force form households. Now that there are such high levels of male and female participation, it is very difficult for people to choose a residential location based on just one person's work location. Two people who are living together have to think about how both of them can get to work. When one undertakes a spatial analysis of the patterns of where people live, particularly in certain demographic cohorts, one finds that dual-income households are highly concentrated in and around city areas. When one looks at the distribution of young children, one finds obviously enough that they are in the same places because they are in the same households. However, outside of these places one finds relatively few younger people and as a consequence fewer and fewer children all the time. That is the intersection between education and the feminisation of the workforce.

The location of work is changing all the time. Some sectors of the economy are growing relatively quickly and other sectors are not. Many of the sectors that are growing more quickly are dominated by female employment, by which I mean that over 80% of the workforce is female. By and large, female work is concentrated in urban centres. This pattern can even be seen within sectors, such as the manufacturing sector. Approximately 50% of male employment in manufacturing is in urban areas and 50% of it is in rural areas.

Over 70% of female manufacturing employment is located in urban centres so women need to live close to an urban centre if they are going to be engaged in the workforce. That aspect creates its own set of issues.

This matter has a wide variety of implications for population change that I have already alluded to. Let us consider research on the period 1996 to 2016 that I have prepared for the committee. One finds that the overall proportion of the rural population has remained the same at 40% of the national population. The ratio has been relatively stable for a long time. When one digs behind the figure one finds that the rural population is unevenly distributed across the base and is increasingly concentrated in areas that are either close to or accessible to cities. One finds that more peripheral places have experienced very low population growth or a population decline. We have a large geographical area of the country that is lowly densely population with fewer than 13 people per square kilometre. The very lowly densely populated areas were identified by identifying electoral divisions with fewer than 13 people per square kilometre. The average population density in those areas is 8 people per square kilometre. These places will struggle to maintain commercial and public services and that has a host of implications.

In terms of drawing our research together and pointing a way forward, some of Teagasc's work focuses on a number of different aspects but I shall highlight three and discuss the research piece at the end. My colleagues in Teagasc are working on the Options for Farm Families programme that looks at their options to develop their farm enterprise. The programme also explores and identifies options for other types of enterprise development. It is an intensive process that is undertaken in partnership with other service delivery agents in rural areas such as a local Leader company, an LEO or an education and training board. The system of bringing people and service providers together has been developed and we think it has a lot of potential. Teagasc has undertaken a piece of research in that space. We have a Ph.D. student considering ways to support those sorts of network development to provide a whole suite of supports that people require.

Rural communities have a good sense of exactly what is happening to them but sometimes they do not understand why something happens. They could be drivers of change in places that are very distant from them but are having an impact. For example, in east Clare a chipboard manufacturer pulled out and relocated to Austria a number of years ago. Austria is not a lower cost economy than Ireland but the manufacturer felt that it could get a better return on the expensive machinery by locating it in Austria in comparison with Ireland. It was difficult for the community to adjust to the loss of a substantial number of jobs in a very rural area. Processes of globalisation and how they impact specifically on particular places are things that communities constantly struggle to deal with. They are uniquely positioned to deal with and respond to those challenges but there is a leadership issue. Communities need to be supported in the development of a leadership capacity to come together and organise. I imagine, in terms of the hearings that the committee will hold, that it will hear from many communities that have a strong leadership capacity. Unfortunately the reality is that not all communities have leadership and there is a need to provide support in that space.

In terms of other initiatives, and this is where working with local community groups Teagasc has been involved in trying to add value to assets. One of the initiatives that my Teagasc colleagues have been involved in is working with Craft International to develop the écomusée idea, which is where one can add a tourism dimension to a food product. Any time we shop we can see the values that are communicated to us through images of particular landscapes or farmers. We want to bring that aspect to the fore and attract tourists to the places where foods are produced, get them to experience the landscapes and to take it forward.

Teagasc has developed another critically important programme on farmer health and farm household health. Unfortunately, the agricultural industry is very dangerous. As we have developed our knowledge and understanding of what is behind many accidents on farms, we have moved towards more of a whole health model. That presents a particular challenge because it is more difficult to provide services in rural areas than in urban centres.

My next point is on research. I am sure the committee will hear from quite a lot of people. There is a huge amount of research to be done on this area. A lot of resources are available to researchers but there are relatively few researchers in this space due to a lack of a dedicated funding stream. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has a new initiative that is coming on-stream called rural renaissance, which links into the EU's major funding initiative called Horizon 2020.

In terms of providing evidence to support policymakers such as committee members, it is crucial that more research is done in this space on the specific issues that we have already heard about from Irish Rural Link, and I am sure we will hear from other contributors today.

I thank the committee very much for their time.